Loops
by Amy-less Wander
Summary: A one-shot time-travel story. Just because history follows a fixed timeline, doesn't mean that the timeline won't require a bit of fixing. A 2020 Hermione confesses to visiting 1977.


Hermione Weasley sat curled in an armchair and glanced around the sitting room of her home with an oddly disbelieving expression. The fireplace she and Ron had arrived through a few minutes ago burned steadily with no flares of green from anyone attempting to contact them or follow after, and the house was quiet, with only faint noises of her husband rattling around in the kitchen. Ron came in with a tea tray levitating behind him, a large mug in each hand, and a bottle of firewhiskey tucked under one elbow. His Aurors' robes fluttered open around him as he walked; either he'd decided that making tea was more important than getting out of uniform, or he subconsciously felt that he was still in investigation mode. Hermione was glad either way, she thought as she sat up and smiled at him. Honestly, sometimes it seemed like half his brain went out the window as soon as he took the badge off.

"Okay, your tea's already dosed, and I brought the teapot and the bottle just in case," he said, setting his burdens down on the coffee table and handing her the mug that read 'Mum' in cheerfully warped blue block letters. "You're really okay?" he asked in a concerned voice.

"I'm fine, actually," she said, sounding somewhat surprised by her own words. "Tired and confused, but fine." She smiled gratefully, taking a sip of very strong rather alcoholic tea. "I missed this. I missed _you_."

Ron briefly squeezed his hands over hers where they were wrapped around her cup. "I missed you, too," he said, with a crooked smile, and stepped back to perch on the edge of the sofa with his elbows on his knees, still leaning in toward her. "I mean, mostly I was worried sick - I hardly had time to miss you. Two days is enough time to start realizing that you'd actually vanished, not just off somewhere being absentminded, and that things were not just odd but maybe seriously wrong," he said, making agitated hand gestures, and gave her a doubtful look. "But not quite enough time that I've been staring at your empty armchair the way you're misting up at holding Hugo's mug."

"Forty-eight hours? Merlin. Thank you for getting me out of there. Thank you for getting rid of the Auror squad. I have no idea what stupid stupid things I was about to accidentally tell them. I suppose I left from the Ministry, so reasonably, I'd come back there, apparition-alarms or no… but Christ, that was awkward." She flung herself out of the armchair to give her husband a hug and settle down next to him on the sofa. "Thanks for covering for me."

"Of course, there's no one I'd rather lie to my team for." He leaned back and wrapped his arm around her, and kissed the top of her head. "True confessions now, though. What happened – you can tell me, right? Where were you? Why did you think you'd been missing for a year?"

"I can't tell you what actually happened when I left the Ministry – _what was it, Tuesday? Unbelievable,_" she murmured, shaking her head, "- because I have no idea, well not much of one, I mean, except for the book… was there a book in my office?" she asked distractedly. "Blue, clothbound, moderately old - maybe 80 years or so - runes on the cover, and an embossed medallion…" She broke off, seeing Ron looking at her with a look she called his 'patient glare', a professional-Auror kind of expression meaning that she was saying a lot of things that he considered irrelevant, but he was fairly certain something interesting would come out eventually, so he would wait. There was a time he would've made some snide comment already, or she would've rambled even more and been oblivious to his impatience until he basically exploded, but it's amazing what eighteen years of marriage could do for a couple. She flapped her hands at him and accelerated her explanation. "But that's not really part of the story anyway, because what happened was – get this – _time travel_," she said excitedly. "For months, almost a year, except I apparently wasn't gone that long," she added, wrinkling her nose.

His eyebrows went up. "Time travel. Like when Rosie was a baby and you wouldn't shut up about how you'd had that sodding time turner in third year and now you'd kill for a spare hour?"

"Yes. Except I was gone so far - so long ago I mean, not just a few hours – it was absolutely insane!"

"Absolutely insane? You're smiling. You liked it!" Ron accused her, poking his finger into her side and making her squirm. "Hermione Granger, adventuring witch, brains behind the Golden Trio, emerges from retirement to save the day once again!"

"Oh, stop it!" she said, laughing. "It was stressful and bizarre and lonely, and I hated it, mostly, except when I didn't. You understand - you wouldn't tease me if you didn't."

"Mum still fusses about how dangerous it is to be an Auror, but you never question for a minute that it's what I want to do. Don't worry, we understand each other." He took her hand where it rested on her knee. "Except for maybe why you're generally fine to sit behind a ruddy desk all day in the first place."

"Thank you," she said, and gave his hand a squeeze. "Actually, that's the thing, I _did_ sit behind a desk all day! I went forty years in the past by means of mysterious forces - and I got a job, and sat at a desk, and nothing dangerous happened, and then I came home." Ron stared at her in disbelief, and she amended, "Yes, I'm being flip. It was more complicated than that, but it wasn't the active kind of danger, I was only in danger of losing my mind."

"Stop being all Dumbledore-vague and tell me what happened!"

"Sorry. It was 43 years ago, 1977 - the first war going on, only not really, it was all just politics and threats and suspicious accidental deaths. I'll tell you what I can remember about how I got there, and when I woke up outside the old Ministry – oh, it was so funny, the first week, trying to figure out what was going on and just finding clothes and a place to stay… it was awful, but rather hilarious in retrospect." She grinned. "But the bare bones, I went to Hogwarts."

"Hogwarts? To ask Dumbledore for help? I guess he'd've been one to ask about time travel stuff."

"Well… not for help with the time thing, to ask for a job. You know how, before Rosie was born, the year I was hating the DMLE pettiness so much, and we were toying with the idea of my going back to teach Charms when Flitwick retired? Well, the Charms slot was obviously taken in the seventies, so I taught Defense for a year."

"No!" Ron said, amazed. "Ruddy hell, I always knew you'd go for teaching somehow. How was it?"

"God, I love you, Ron. I'm telling you a story about crazy time travel, and you ask whether I found the temporary career personally fulfilling." She snuggled against him. "Yes. Yes, I did, but I wouldn't do it again, but that's not the point." She gave him a mischievous smile. "Think, Ronald! Hogwarts! 1977!"

"Merlin's holey socks!" Ron stared at her open-mouthed.

"Yes, I saw them! Everybody!" Hermione said, laughing excitedly. "Harry's parents were seventh years! It was absolutely mad! They were so young, and so funny, but so serious at the same time… I can't wait to tell him –" she broke off for a moment. "I mean, I want to, but… he'll want to know, right?"

"You mean, is he going to be insanely jealous that you got to meet them?" Ron shrugged. "Maybe? But not really. He's got Ginny and his own family, so he's less invested now. Be gentle, and he'll be glad to hear."

"I hope," she said. "But they were there, and I met them – everyone, Sirius and Remus, Snape before he had fully mastered the art of making his robes billow, Neville's mum, though his dad was already graduated, Dorcas Meadowes, all those names we've heard but never known."

"That's… That's just insane. So what did you do?"

"Well, taught classes, graded papers, gave detentions, laughed at them in private... tried not to make a spectacle of myself. It would be inconvenient if anybody recognized me, so frankly, nothing much."

"You had a chance to change everything and you didn't?"

Hermione looked at him intently. "No, no chance – time doesn't change," she said emphatically, then took his hand and continued more gently. "I was never really sure after that night with the Time Turner third year, if you actually understood what we'd done, why we couldn't do anything about Peter's escaping, or if you just said you'd understood to get me to stop talking."

Ron's ears turned a faint pink - a subtle effect compared to his teenage years, but it still made Hermione smile - and he shrugged. "Umm… I'm not sure? I might've understood. Enough."

She laughed, and drank some of her tea. "A refresher course, then, since it's relevant again. That's the way time works, it only happens one way. Even if there are a few little loops in the process – that's time travelers – the loops just mesh in with the only way it can happen, and the fabric is constant. I _couldn't _change anything. I could _try_ to change something, I could _think_ I was changing something, but it wouldn't possibly work. There's no way I could have made 1977 - and by result 1981, 1994, or any other time – be any different from how we know it happened."

"I remember. You told me that for months in '94, and it sank in eventually."

"So, I'll shut up then," she said, tousling her hand into his flop of red hair playfully. "See? I'm learning, only took twenty years of living with you."

"Nah, best to keep telling me. It makes sense I reckon, but it's hard to really believe it. Like, gut level _know _that's the way it works. I mean, you were there, and you just had to sit tight and watch everything, and you couldn't warn anybody, or do anything useful?"

"Well, yes. If you promise not to let it ruin my reputation, I'll confess I didn't completely believe it either. I was an awful mess at first; I was terrified to do anything, wasn't sure if I was allowed to talk to anybody, or if I'd be able to get back, and if people would recognize me. I _knew_ that time can't change – in theory - but being there is something else entirely." She sighed and leaned against his arm, trying to snuggle in without losing the ability to look at each other. "But then I was thinking about how we used the Timeturner in third year: not to change anything, just to fill in the gaps that nobody had been quite sure how it happened. We couldn't change that Peter escaped or that Remus forgot his potion, but we hadn't been quite sure where the Patronus came from or what had happened to Buckbeak, so Harry and I took care of that on the loop back, and then it all made sense, right?"

"Yeah," he said tentatively.

"So I thought, if something happened that nobody quite understands, that will tell me what it is I have to take care of, the reason my loop has to be there to make the whole thing work."

"That… almost makes sense," Ron admitted.

"And the obvious answer was, nobody knew how Harry survived the killing curse, except that Lily presumably 'did something'."

"That's obvious, is it?"

"Well, it was the right shape puzzle piece, you see? To me it's rather obvious that Lily had something to do with it – but if you're one of those _Potter the Savior _fanatics then it was Harry's infantile but amazing magical prowess, or it was because of the prophecy if you don't think Divination is a load of bunk, or it was simply the power of love if you're Dumbledore. There's no real explanation."

"I guess not," Ron said doubtfully, "and I remember you'd been asking Harry about it a few years back. But I hadn't thought you'd figured it out."

"Well, no, I didn't get very far. Harry wasn't entirely comfortable having me poking into his parents' deaths, so I stopped. But I did read those books about blood warding, and ancient-style protection spells based on sacrifice, and so forth, so I couldn't really help having theories. _Literally_ couldn't help it, I suppose, since the loop required some knowledge of the topic." She shrugged. "So there I was in 1977, and I knew something that Lily presumably needed to know about, so I found a way to tell her. I still don't know what she did in the end, but I suggested that such things were possible and I told her where to look for information."

"Oh, I bet - a little anonymous owl, 'Dear Lily, here are some ritual texts you may be interested in reading, as self-sacrifice and motherly love are immensely popular with teenagers these days.'?"

Hermione rolled her eyes and poked his arm. "I was her Defense professor. I assigned independent study projects – topics suggested by me - and gave any student who asked list of recommended references." She added smugly, "I might've loaned books to a few dedicated students who seemed particularly interested."

"Harry survived because his mum was a swot who went above and beyond on schoolwork projects?" said Ron, in mock disbelief.

Hermione snorted. "And then he survived a few more times because _I'm_ a swot who went above and beyond on schoolwork projects. I'd think you numpties would notice a pattern."

Ron laughed, and hugged her in close. "I did miss you."

She snuggled into his shoulder and kissed at his neck, and then picked up a stray thought. "She wasn't really, though – Lily, a swot, I mean – she was a good student, talented and very interested, but not exactly meticulous. I guess I shouldn't have expected it, not if she was dating James Potter."

Ron looked suddenly thoughtful. "Was he… all right?" he asked tentatively. "I mean, a decent bloke, or is Harry going to be disappointed, or can you not tell him…" he trailed off.

"Oh, no, nothing so dire! James – and Sirius, too – they weren't really so bad. So young! Though if seventh year was an improvement, I hate to think… They were absolute gits to Snape, and to Regulus, but also to a lot of Slytherins I had no sympathy for - and honestly they were getting as good as they gave, or more. If I don't ask myself who started it back when they were all eleven, it was just a constant exchange of retaliations. The upper hallways were a pretty rough place in the seventies - though the worst fight I saw was actually a couple of sixth-years." She shrugged. "I'm not entirely surprised that the war got worse as that lot was graduating; their Slytherin House made our Malfoy look like a perfect gentleman."

"Huh," Ron said, blinking back a series of fairly unpleasant mental images.

"And all those stories of pranks?" Hermione continued, shaking her head, "I was expecting the absolute worst, I suppose, but they were a lot like Fred and George were at school, really – but without the Wheezes gear, though the swamp would've been absolutely typical - and I can handle that. Not even as bad as that week with Al and James here to visit after George loaded them up." Hermione shook her head at the memory and Ron laughed slightly. "The boys had amazing stuff – animagus forms, the Potter cloak, the Marauders' Map – but they were for sneaking, not splash. They could go anywhere, and place pranks unexpectedly, but the jokes themselves were relatively tame compared to some of the things we take for granted. Seriously, no Skiving Snackboxes, no prank candy at all unless you count Ice Mice or Sugar Quills; they had dungbombs and fireworks, but not everlasting smoking dungbombs, or Whizbangs."

"I guess not," Ron said. His forehead furrowed. "It's funny, thinking about stuff like that, that George really is inventing things and nobody had them before. Not like I reckon you'd go to the past and come back with new ideas, but I figured there must've been something to learn from the Marauders in their prime. Aren't you supposed to be a collector of lost historic lore?"

Hermione smirked slightly. "Well, believe this - there's a reason that Flaming Yo-Yos were still on Filch's Banned Items list for years after they went out of production. And remind me to tell George about wet-start fireworks."

"Sounds fascinating," Ron said, with a wicked glint in his eye.

"Well, if we're Wheezes shareholders, I'd best do my part for the company," she said, grinning. "Sirius and all – I still want to call them Marauders, though I don't know if they ever did, themselves - they were famous over the whole school, everybody knew them, looked in their direction at the first sign of strangeness, but if anybody called them anything, it was usually 'those Gryffindor prats'. Anyway, they would balance out the sniping at particular Slytherins with general mayhem and things that made Dumbledore laugh, so they didn't even get in awful amounts of trouble… They did some nice broad-effect stuff, good charm-work… But Christ, they were wicked to each other, too. Like how you and Percy and Gin were Fred and George's favorite targets, much more than kids they barely knew…"

They sat quietly for a moment, thinking of school days and pranksters long gone; Hermione poured them new mugs of tea, which Ron obligingly spiked. "Good lads, all around," Ron said, chinking their mugs together in a little toast.

"Good lads," Hermione agreed, her gaze distant, and settled back on the sofa with Ron's arm around her.

Ron asked suddenly, "Do you think anybody'll recognize you?"

Hermione gave him a pained look. "Who? Who would recognize me? They're all dead."

Ron rubbed her hand sympathetically, and gave her a minute before giving her a skeptical look. "Everybody?"

Hermione huffed out a little laugh. "No, no, you're right, I'm exaggerating. The first names we think of from then aren't here now, and there's no-one I'm close with now who was alive then, but I met plenty of people who I could technically go find today if I wanted. Except I wasn't close with anybody much then - didn't dare, especially not people who I knew would meet me later… I'm not really worried, though. People like Sirius and Remus and Dumbledore, people who survived the first war and knew me during the second – well, I was so young when they died, I doubt anybody made the connection. And even if someone suspected, they didn't tell me, so I'll never know."

"But what about the other people, like Minerva, and the other professors? I mean, I know there's not many left of Harry's parents' class, but you taught everybody, not just the seventh-years, right?"

She smirked at him. "Oh, yes. Little Edmund Stubblebine, second-year Ravenclaw."

"No! Stubblebine, Head Investigations Auror? My boss?"

"Yes, that Stubblebine. Sweet little boy, competent but not remarkable at age 13, slightly flat nose even then - so he's lying if he blames you for breaking it in that raid - massive amounts of thick blond hair, looked rather like a lion."

Ron snorted at the thought of his mostly-bald section head. "All that weight must've dragged it out by the roots." After a moment's contemplation, he asked, "So will he be giving you fishy looks at the next office party, then?"

Hermione smiled smugly and shrugged. "He hasn't yet… Hundreds of students knew me that year, and nobody has said a word so far. It's not like they'd suddenly start recognizing me now, simply because I finally found out I was there."

"Seriously? You don't think anybody will suspect that Professor H. Weasley, 1977, and Hermione Granger, 1997, and Hermione Weasley, 2020, are all the same person?"

"One of us might be a bit daft, but it's not me!" she teased him. "I wouldn't use my own name, Ronald!" He looked at her inquiringly and she grinned. "Flora Meriwether."

He smiled and kissed the top of her head. "You're sweet. Your Da would've loved it."

When eleven-year-old Hermione had come home from her first trip to Diagon Alley, excited beyond belief and twirling her brand new wand to make sparks, Mr Granger had teased her, saying, 'So which one are you, then, Flora, Fauna, or Merryweather?' and continued the nicknames for years. Hermione smiled softly. "He'd mostly call me Miss Flora, except when I was being extremely stubborn, and then it was Merryweather all the way."

"And no-one suspected?" Ron asked.

"Quite a few people were aware that I was working under an alias by the end, but it didn't come to much. Dumbledore knew I wasn't real when he hired me, said satisfyingly cryptic things about how believing me and believing in me were very different things. I gave him wooly socks for Christmas and he backed me to the hilt." She shrugged. "You're the only one who'd be able to connect the name to me… maybe Harry… I worried at first that McGonagall might somehow hear it in the 90's, but no-one else had even met my parents while I was at school, much less knew about Da's nicknames." She smiled at the memories, then frowned slightly. "Of everyone, it's Minerva I worry about the most; I just have to hope that having a new Defense professor every year for four decades means she stopped paying much attention. I did avoid her as best I could though, and I don't think she's recognized me up to now, but she's the type to stay quiet for years. I didn't really change my appearance – massive layers of glamours plus the fake name would be too suspicious – but I tweaked a few things."

"I'll say," Ron muttered, bending the arm that was draped over her shoulders to mesh his fingers into her hair. "Forty-eight-hour bender and you come back with a mad-short haircut. I don't approve. Is this some funky potiony shampoo? It's all silky-flat."

She laughed softly. "It'll grow; I'll even speed it up if it bothers you. Be glad you didn't see it iron grey – it was just a color-change charm, like when Teddy puts it fuchsia when he thinks I'm not looking, but it made me look quite different. I suppose it hardly counts as 'prematurely grey' any more at forty-one, but honestly I looked like I might've been in my sixties. Formidable was what I was going for, to support the character. I was hardly even acting like myself."

Ron frowned. "Aren't you technically forty-two now, if you were there for a whole year?"

"Definitely not!" she replied in mock horror. "In fact, I think I might be thirty-nine, like you and Ginny."

Ron smirked at the joke that had started on his fortieth birthday. "Still, you think nobody's going to notice, not even later, when you – _if_ you go grey for real?"

"You've got to understand, time-travel is possible, but not frequent, and not well-understood - it just doesn't happen. We don't think of it as a rational reason that anything could seem familiar. If anybody gets a sense of déjà-vu, they'd likely assume that it's a relative, family resemblance – even Muggleborn, you know, how the Creeveys were actually distant fourth-cousin descendents of the pureblood Gamps, by a squib line?"

"Huh. Makes sense. I even know people who've had time-turners, but I'd never consider the possibility when we're doing crime scene investigations," Ron said, then snorted. "I hope somebody _does_ come up and tell you about your hidden heritage and how they couldn't find much information on the Meriwether family - I'd love to see you get out of that conversation without blushing."

"You'd be surprised. It's been a great year for learning how to tell straight-faced lies," she said, and took a stiff drink of her tea. "It was challenging, and really interesting, and almost fun, but not exactly relaxing – not as bad as the camping trip from hell, but I'm so glad it's over. And successfully, at that."

"Cheers," Ron said, congratulating her with a shared drink. "You're sure it worked, then? It's just… unbelievable… I mean, I don't know why I asked, on one hand I know that Harry wouldn't have survived that first killing curse without something extraordinary, and you say that was Lily… and I guess I see it was important to get information to Lily, but a whole year there just to give her a reading list?"

"Well, to give her a reading list in a way that she was likely to actually pay attention to it and understand it. And who knows what else? That's the only task I was sure about, the reason I thought to go to Hogwarts, but almost anything I did might've been crucial… taught some spell to a future Auror and saved somebody's life?" She gave a mystified shrug and a sad smile. "Taught some spell to a future Death Eater and got someone killed? Whatever else there was, it's done."

"I'm sure it'll be okay," Ron said soothingly, then snorted at himself. "I mean, I guess that's the point, it's always okay. Loops that have to be closed and all that."

She gave a sudden shout of laughter. "Oh, right! There's one I know for sure, but it was so minor – I might have been responsible for getting the Marauder's Map confiscated."

"What? That's just cruel! Isn't there some time-traveler's oath 'First, do no harm'?"

She shoved at his arm. "Shut _up_, there aren't enough of us to have oaths. To clarify, I might have had something to do with Filch filing an apparently blank piece of parchment under the label 'Confiscated and Highly Dangerous' instead of destroying it. James and Remus were clearly responsible for getting their own bloody Map impounded. Mostly Remus's fault, really," she said with a fond smile.

"Hmm," Ron agreed. "You've finally given up calling him Professor Lupin then, sounds like?"

"You can't even _think_ the word 'professor' when you're looking at a self-conscious seventeen-year-old who's growing his very first moustache." They looked at each other and burst out laughing, and she added, between giggles, "I think he hoped it would cover one of the scars."

"I might remember Sirius teasing him about that…"

"He was sweet, actually – they all were. They were fighters, talented wizards, hearts in the right place, aware of the seriousness of the political climate, but they were so young. It reminded me of us in fourth year, storming around the school accusing Snape and Malfoy and most of Slytherin House of anything and everything, when we had a genuine Death Eater for a professor without knowing it. They suspected me, of course. It was a dangerous time, and to find a professor teaching under an alias – and not a nice professor at that – she's clearly up to something awful, something worthy of pulling out all the stops and sneaking around school to investigate."

"You weren't a nice professor?" he asked.

"Er, no," she admitted. "I was reasonable, I hope, but I wasn't _nice_. I didn't want to get too close to people."

"But, if you weren't afraid of actually changing anything…" Ron's question tapered off.

Hermione smiled tiredly. "Honestly, it was an awful year. Even knowing it had to work out somehow, I was worried how I was going to get back, and what would happen if Dumbledore stopped trusting me, and I was scared to talk to anybody. I avoided Minerva - and Poppy, too, and all the teachers who had still been there in the 90's - but of all the people I couldn't relax around, the seventh-years were the worst, I was just too curious to know what they'd been like. And there they all were, James and Lily so happy, and Sirius and Remus so almost-familiar, and I was so lonely – there were days that if I'd tried to have a real conversation with any of them I would've burst into tears." She sighed, and Ron's hand started moving comfortingly on her back. "I tried to model on Minerva - polite and fair, but unamused and unlikely to have personal interactions with students – but I'm afraid I could rather relate to Snape's tactic of being so incredibly unpleasant that people would go out of their way to leave me alone."

Ron hugged her in close. "All that's got to stop now, you hear?"

"Oh, yes, please. I'm tired of lonely and unpleasant." Hermione suddenly burst out laughing. "Oh, Sirius called me names! Crotchety Thunderstorms - infantile play on Merry-weather I guess… I took points, of course, but that was the best day, the day I heard I heard him…"

Ron sniggered. "Sounds like him. It didn't bother you?"

"It would've hurt a bit, even knowing I wasn't trying to be nice, but it was proof that I was doing it right! Do you remember, that Christmas 5th year, Sirius was telling Harry stories - trying to cheer each other up I guess - I'm almost certain he used that nickname. I hadn't even known I remembered, hadn't thought of it in years," Hermione said. "Then there I was in the hallway, and he called me that, and it was like getting a little note that said 'Dear Hermione, please be as terrifying as possible, love, Sirius' and I wanted to laugh, and I wanted to cry, and all I could do was take five points and storm off down the hall. Channeling Snape, of course."

"So, there was supposed to be a Professor Meriwether, and she was supposed to act like that?"

"That's what I've been saying, Ron, that's the way time works, it's just a matter of trusting it, and having confidence. Oh, but it was _so_ nice to get confirmation!" Hermione admitted. "I spent the first few months not sure I'd made the right choices and half-convinced I was about to do something completely wrong - and then I realized that there was no such thing, that in fact every choice was the right choice." She shifted into teacher-mode automatically, setting down her tea to free her hands for emphasis. "Say I decided that I was going to stop the whole nonsense and kill Peter outright, then and there. That would be the right choice. Given that we know he survived, that meant I could try to kill him as much as I wanted and there would be whatever seemingly-unrelated reasons that I wasn't able to. So should I try? That would be the right choice - after all, maybe that's how Professor Meriwether's contract at Hogwarts was ended, and I just hadn't heard the gossip. Or should I leave him alone, which seemed more sensible? That was the right choice, too." She shrugged slightly. "Once I calmed down a bit, and stopped second-guessing myself, it was just a matter of keeping my eyes open and being ready to take action when something looked like a good idea, and not worrying too much."

"Not worrying?" Ron's eyebrows raised so high they disappeared into his fringe. "Not your style, really."

"No," she agreed with a little laugh, "that's why it was so nice to hear that from Sirius. Time-travel is rather like a dose of Felix Felicis, from how Harry described it – you just assume everything will work out for the best, and do whatever seems right."

"So really, it all worked out, and you'll just pick up and go on with life now, like none of that whole year ever happened?"

"Well, like it happened forty-odd years ago to somebody else, but yes," Hermione said. She sighed and leaned against him. "I don't think I'll be setting foot in Hogwarts again if I can help it, not any time soon. I don't want to see Minerva until it's a bit less fresh on my mind."

"Understandable. She'll be at the Potter Christmas party, though."

"That's a couple of months, anyway; I'll just be sure to grow my hair out first."

"Good priority," Ron agreed, carding his fingers through the short fluff. "This is kind of fun, but I miss getting my hand hopelessly tangled."

"Oh, shut it," she protested, nudging him lazily with an elbow without moving her head from his shoulder.

They sat quietly for a few minutes, until Ron suddenly asked, "Are you sure it worked? I mean, are you sure you didn't change something by accident?"

She sat up and gave him an exasperated look. "Ron, time doesn't _have_ accidents – "

"I know, I know," he said, waving her off, "and you know, too. But are you really so certain that you're not even going to check?"

"Well, we've been talking for hours and you haven't corrected me yet," she pointed out.

"Maybe I'm just too polite," he suggested.

"That'll be the day – no, if I talk nonsense, you rub my face in it, that's the way it works!"

"No, you must be thinking of your other husband, some crude insensitive lout in some other version of history. I'm the clever one who always understands you, never puts my foot in it, brings you whiskey-tea, and always keeps up the cleaning charms," Ron said with a smug smile.

"It's a miracle!" Hermione said, and kissed him. "Oh, but this is tragic," she murmured between kisses, "The world is unrecognizable... mmm… What have I done?" She giggled. "Where did it all go wrong?"

"If it's that awful," Ron agreed in the gaps, "maybe I'll relapse," then he broke off their snog and laughed. "Seriously, aren't you itching to go read the history books and make sure it all worked? I saw you looking over at the bookshelf back when we were talking about Harry – it must be driving you wild."

"Oh, aren't you just the cutest Investigations-Auror?" she teased, rubbing their noses together. "But yes," she confessed, looking towards the wall of books with a little laugh. "I know it's silly, but I do want to read up and see in print that I didn't mess anything up. But it's more important to talk to you. I missed you. I missed just talking and not worrying. It's so good to be home." She sighed and rested her head on his shoulder.

"I'm glad you're back." Ron tightened his arms around her for a few moments before starting to disengage. "But we've talked, and we'll talk some more later, so shall I leave you to it for a bit? I'll get out of my work robes and find us some food. I finished off the leftover chicken last night but I'll see what's around."

"The chicken?" she asked vaguely, then shuddered. "It's just as well – I'm not sure I could bring myself to eat something I cooked a year ago. Order in a curry?"

"Sure," he said agreeably, and wandered out, shucking off his uniform robe as he went.

She went over to the bookcase to pick a few key volumes. "Let's see…" she murmured to herself, "_Famous Wizards of the Twenty-first Century_ should cover the second war, and the previous volume for the first war… or maybe it would make more sense to read one of those war histories, even though they're pretty uniformly atrocious… oh, but most of those are advance copies the publisher sent us for free, and I never read them the first time, so I couldn't be sure if things changed or if they're just idiots… hmmm…. _Hogwarts, a History_ is a good start, at least I _know_ that one..." She continued browsing the shelf, sending selected books over to stack on the table by her armchair as she went, then refilled her mug of tea (without firewhiskey) and settled herself in for a good long read.

Some time later, Hermione looked up from _The Rise and Fall and Rise and Fall of Voldemort_ when she heard Ron walk into the room. "How goes it?" he asked. "Sun still rises in the east? Voldemort still dead?"

"Not bad so far," she said. "A bit depressing to be explicitly reminded of it all, but useful to get re-centered in the now. I think I should take another day off work to sort through some of this. I'm going to send an owl to Harry and Ginny, see if they're free for dinner tomorrow, okay?"

"Harry and…" Ron trailed off, looking perplexed. "I don't know any Ginnys." He paused. "Are you sure it's not possible to change anything?"

Hermione's face went pale, and she coughed out – "your _sister_? They didn't…"

"No, Harry's married to Pansy Parkinson," Ron said in confusion.

Hermione stammered in disbelief for a moment, then shrieked and flung herself at him. "Ron Weasley, you absolute _git_!" she yelled, punching at his chest and laughing as he grabbed at her wrists. "We already talked about Ginny - and James and Albus and Lily - not even an hour ago, and you are a big fat _liar_!"

Ron fell over in a heap on the sofa, laughing too hard to hold himself up, and taking her with him. "Your face!" he gasped. "Pansy Parkinson! You believed me, for just a split second. It was beautiful."

"It was horrible," she insisted, grinning and poking viciously at his ribs from where she'd been pulled down on top of him. "And I'm warding my bookshelf before you get any more bright ideas about editing."

"You think?" he asked, teasing her. He took advantage of their collapse on the sofa to wrap his arms around her and kiss her thoroughly. "It's good to have you back," he said.

"It's good to _be_ back," she agreed, "even if my husband is an immature prat."

"Runs in the family," he said. "Now go read your books and I'll send Gin that owl."

_AN: Thanks to all for reading! I'm working up to writing something longer than a one-shot, but this is a fine start (my first posting, and thanks to Kirsten for making me do it!). I'd appreciate hearing what you think, if you can spare me a moment._

_Is there sufficient plot? Gaping concept holes? Too much explanation, or left things too confusing? Excessive irrelevant conversation? Have I read too much fanfic and forgotten what's canon? Can Ron be an adult and a competent Auror and still be believably Ron? Should I have actually tried to write the 1977 version or is the condensed retrospective a fine approach?_


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